I was listening to a news item on the radio about an outdoor skills workshop. The organizers wanted participants to takeaway three key points: the importance of Positivity, Ingenuity, and Resilience. The organizers said that keeping these concepts front of mind would be helpful not only in outdoor survival situations but for life in general. I agree.

The idea that we as individuals, businesses, communities and regions need to be Resilient is a popular idea these days. Merriam-Webster defines resilience as "an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change". As climate continues to change, the need for resilience is obvious, however, there is also alot of discussion about raising resilient kids and business resilience.

The definition of resilience does not tell you how to "recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change". That is why the concepts of positivity and ingenuity are also important because they are often critical in achieving resilience. You are less likely to be resilient if you maintain a negative attitude to misfortune or change or if you lack the ability to come up with new and innovative solutions to the problems that arise.

Positivity + Ingenuity does not equal Resilience, however, because the ability to adapt to misfortune or change also consists of anticipating what might go wrong and developing safeguards to help protect you against those scenarios. So communities recognizing that power outages might become longer or more frequent, are creating warming centers and places to pickup drinking water. Individuals are buying generators. Resilience is more about developing the strategies, assets and organizations required to deal with misfortune or change. Resilience often requires positivity and ingenuity to actually come into effect.

Resilience is an important idea whose time has come, however, we might keep in mind that positivity and ingenuity are also important when dealing with misfortune or change.